Will apple TV recognise media on airport extreme?

I'm thinking of getting an apple tv, but just unsure how it works.
Instead of using the apple tv hard drive, I want it to play media Wirelessly from my external USB hard drive which is connected to my airport extreme.

Is this possible? And would it stream well over the "n" wireless network

Also I will be setting this apple tv up for my daughter, and don't want her to see all the media on the shared drive, is there a way to restrict this on the apple tv?

One other question, can a mac recognise and play media from an apple tv that's on the same network?

I'm thinking of getting an apple tv, but just unsure how it works.
Instead of using the apple tv hard drive, I want it to play media Wirelessly from my external USB hard drive which is connected to my airport extreme.

Is this possible? And would it stream well over the "n" wireless network

Also I will be setting this apple tv up for my daughter, and don't want her to see all the media on the shared drive, is there a way to restrict this on the apple tv?

One other question, can a mac recognise and play media from an apple tv that's on the same network?

Thanks in advance

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Well, I'm no expert, but.......

You cannot play media from an external drive connected to the AES.

As for streaming, yes the ATV streams over your wireless network, but only from a computer with an Itunes library (or an external drive plugged into a computer on the network)

YOu can pick and choose what movies/shows/music will be shared with the ATV.

Not sure about your last question - If you have a wireless network, you should be able to watch whatever is in your Itunes library from any computer.
There would be no reason to want to stream from the ATV.

Yes, you can have your media on a drive connected to your airport extreme, but the content has to be in your iTunes Library (the actual files can reside on the airport, but links to it have to be in iTunes) and your computer will need to be on with iTunes running. Your network will have to do double-time to do this, but with an "n" network it should be ok. Others can chime in and let you know about their experiences running their systems this way.

As long as it is iTunes media which is on a drive on your Airport you will be able to stream it to the ATV as long as iTunes is open. If you want to not use iTunes you will need to hack your ATV to see the media on the network. You would need something like aTV Flash.

If you are using this information to decide whether or not to buy an Airport Extreme, I'd caution that the data rates for an Airport Extreme-connected drive are often slow as snot.

I bought an Airport Extreme hoping to be able to host my iTunes files on it, and I found it to be insufficient performance wise.

I'm not sure if that's improved with the new model, and I've heard of people having decent success with certain drives and alternatives like the Time Capsule, but I thought I'd give warning just to temper your expectations.

Staff Member

I've got all my HandBraked movies stored on a Western Digital USB HD which is plugged into my AirPort Extreme. Like others have said, you have to add them to your iTunes library first and have the computer and iTunes running but I have found they stream perfectly fine over Wi-Fi to my Apple TV.

Thanks to everyone else for the info, as I am currently trying to set this up and needed a little direction.

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I've been doing this for six months, and seems to work relatively fine using an AppleTV Patchstick, and installation of Boxee.

Boxee will allow you to connect to the HDD attached to the AEBS.

Common issue with the latest firmware on AEBS though, is that after a week or two, I get connectivity problems trying to get to the HDD from another Mac. If the AppleTV is reset, all is fine, but there seems to be some sort of bug there that hopefully gets addressed soon. Alternative is not to upgrade to the very latest firmware release on the AEBS.

Just realised that the time capsule is basically an airport extreme with a built in HDD.

Would i get better/faster performance streaming media to apple tv from time capsule compared to the external HD connected to the airport extreme?

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The comparisons I have seen around the net have shown no difference...although I cannot find them now. I liked adding my own drives as with the Extreme you can add a USB hub resulting in multiple drives hanging off the Extreme and it also makes it easy to upgrade your HDD capacity.

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